I'm thinking that, if it is in a balloon, it is in fact wrapped. And hey, there is some helium naturally in the air, I would guess then that we are all transferring a bit of unauthorized helium around with us everywhere we go. Saying you're lightening the plane, yeah, okay, but you are still taking up volume, so they have a right to at least a bit of postage, even if it is not measurable on the postal scales.:P
Well, then I'll tell you: most of them were delivered. A few were not. A USPS guy drank the water bottle. The brick arrived in little pieces. The feather duster was pretty quick. Most things arrived within a week. A few took longer. Someone got mad about the touth.
generally, when no one comments, it is not a discussion, it is a monologue. What made you think that we weren't having a discussion here? I mean, you replied to me, I reply to you, someone else might reply, so what is the problem? Discussion.
Generally something almost two months old would be considered old news, no matter if it was linked to in a Slashdot comment or not. Despite this, the article still has merit both for laughts and legitimate information. Therefore, it seems to be a bit of Stuff that matters.. Also, considering my general nerdiness and my interest in the article, this posting was, at least for me, a bit of News for nerds. Therefore, it seems to fit.
This link was mentionted during Rob's recent tirade on junk mail and mailing back the offending letters. AIR has done many other amusing studies, but this one stands out for its sheer scope.
I would advise you, though, not to put the postal employees through too much grief. Their job is tough enough as it is. When you want to send some critical and strangely sized package, just do us all a favor and use FedEx or UPS or one of the many other private carriers. And pack appropriately! The poor guy who had to figure out what to do with the moldy and stinky cheese deserves a medal. The person who was forced to break the brick into little pieces to check for drug content probably had better things to do. And the person who had to lug the snow ski to a mailbox probably does not get enough medical coverage by the USPS to make up for the dent in his back.
These are people, people! Give 'em a bit of respect, or at least think about what they have to put up with on those days when you want to shoot someone because of the quality of service you receive.
... rather than read the whole page I went to lexis-nexis to see if despair had in fact filed any suits in U.S. District court. They hadn't.
Rather than go to Lexis/Nexis to find out of Despair really sued 7,000,000 people based on their e-mails harvested from Carnivore, I just thought about it for about...oh....maybe.0000001 second and figured it out myself.
Re:I don't understand this pacifist bleating
on
'Thirteen Days'
·
· Score: 2
Then again, some people (even prominent historians) believe that the whole thing was dumb luck. JFK didn't want to go to war, so he tried an untested blockade strategy. Many of his decisions were not carried out the way they were intended, as witnessed many times in the movie, with a bunch of A-bomb tests right during these intense nehotiations. Instead, a cautious President and an emotional Soviet Premier who both didn't want nuclear war resulted in us not having one. But it could easily have gone the other way, as evident by all of the troops, on both sides, acting on their own. (Shooting down U2, conducting bomb tests, shooting sparklers over the ships).
Dumb luck. Not necessarily my view, but certainly one way to look at it.
Generally high school teachers try to avoid movies that are as inaccurate or uninformative as this one. Instead, I expect them to show The Missiles of October, a television movie based partly on RFK's book Thirteen Days but much deeper and all around more informative than this cinematic dullness. In Thirteen Days the movie, all we see in Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. Now, I love JFK and RFK as much as the next guy, but how about seeing how this crisis is playing out everywhere else? In Cuba? In the Kremlin? In the US press? Or in EXCOMM, whose meetings we rarely see.
The movie acts like its the Kennedy brothers against a vast conspiracy of generals who want world destruction, when it wasn't that at all. Additionally, we never get to see or hear about some of the most important decisions of the crisis, such as Kruschev's two letters to Kennedy and the meetings of the OAS when they decide to back the US. Finally, the UN scenes are a circus, with everyone cheering on Stevenson as he yells at the Russian ambassador.
All in all, an interesting movie with some nice looks at the U2 pilots etc., but not worthwhile for serious history buffs.
The Administration has concluded that
there are no meaningful or effective
control measures for computer hardware that address the technological and
marketplace challenges identified during the review. The review found that
the ability to control the acquisition of computational capabilities by
controlling computer hardware is becoming ineffective and will be
increasingly so within a very short time...Nevertheless,
the review did find that there is merit in continuing to control national
security and proliferation-related software.
In short, they are reclassifying countries on a three tier scale, and restricting accordingly. They suggest that, while hardware restrictions are continuing for the time being, those restrictions are becoming increasingly ineffective and should be scrapped by the next administration. Rather, software exports should be more controlled, which to me means snooping software, encryption software, and software for CAD as it relates to high-powered weapons design and the like.
I understand this as a practical matter, but I wonder whether the US is the only country that has such software. It seems unlikely, and, while I understand that they feel they have to do what they can to preserve national security, other countries can still sell, distribute, or develop such software in the future. Still, this is good for all of those countries that need powerful computers and don't have the expertise or resources to develop them on their own.
Whatever they choose uses their own AP classes/libraries/headers anyway, so most programming languages will be similar when doing AP tests. I know when I did it last year we had to learn only the very basic C++ for console, using headers like apstring.h to do our work. They keep it simple. It's not about the programming language on those tests, it mostly about the concepts.
Oh yeah, and stupid recursion exercises just to see if we're paying attention.
Then again, look at Wired recently. They now have a huge ugly Compaq banner on the bottom of the home page. Salon seems to be the first to embrace new advertising, and they certainly have enough banners on every page. Last count: 8. Sadly, this appears to be the future. How much do you really make on your site with 2M impressions? Enough to support it? Perhaps, perhaps not. When you have a writing staff like Salon, you're probably not making enough.
I want I want I want micropayments. I would gladly pay $0.02 to read the NYT article, if that is how much they are getting from an advertiser for showing those nasty giant banner ads on the sides. As it is it is easy to ignore banners, but that is no way to make money on the web. So the content providers obviously need money, I just hate the way they do it...Ah, well. Since most of us don't want to spend hundreds a month on web page viewing, ads will continue, I just with they weren't so evil. Salon.com gets it right -- they have a bunch of those stupid links in the story itself, eg "View these sites with SafeWeb" or "Backflip this page." I get the feeling that many more people will be turning off JavaScript now...
I've tried that idea several times. They generally just hang up on me when I ask to speak to a manager, get an address or phone number, or ask to be removed from their lists. This so-called "law" is so difficult to argue successfully that it is basically worthless.
How about we give 7 years in jail to everyone who ever breaks into a computer system? I mean, I sure hate spam as much as the next guy, but "hijacking" mail servers is a crimial offense now? And 7 years jail for doing it? Incredible! How could we endorse this when we as a community often advocate white hat hacking and general system exploration? I mean, a civil action would be merited, and perhaps some monetary penalty, but JAIL??? I don't know, this worries me. It is a dangerous precedent.
What I don't understand is, how did he know the results of the elections if they were not allowed to be transmitted in any form? If they in fact WERE released in some way before the polls closed, then what is the problem? But if they WERE NOT, either he stole partial counts, or he did exit polling, the first of which is illegal and the second of which is certainly not, as people, even in Canada, have some semblance of free speech.;-)
So my question is, how did he get the information? And how can you charge someone with posting non-copyrighted/confidential/classified information in any media publication? Rights of the press and all that?
Okay, moving on. Chief problems: this is a US organization. Maybe standards for cooperatives are different in other countries. In fact, I'm sure they are. That's the problem with some of these domains in control of specialied organizations. For instance, ".aero". Will it only be for US aerospace companies? What constitutes an aerospace co.? What about if an Pakistani government-owned co. wants a ".aero", except the US has some kind of embargo against them? All domains should be completely internationalized, governed over by an international NGO, working with the UN or something warm and fuzzy like that. No more of this national crap!
for the status quo. I agree with Nader on this one, just like they do in New Mexico when elections are equal -- you flip a coin, draw straws, or play a game of poker, and the winner is the leader of the free world.
Really, how would that be any worse than what we have right now? Whoever becomes President will lack any kind of mandate, that much is clear. What is more important, though, is that no one really wants either of them. Like in the 1800s with Hayes and Tilden, the election was so close there that they finally came to an agreement: Hayes will be Pres. (Republican), but would not seek a second term, and he would not change any policy substantially. This should be what happens here -- preserve the status quo, get rid of the two of 'em as soon as possible, and start fresh in four years.
yeah, good point. that would be tough to imagine. ah, well. i apologize. guess i'm just a bit trigger happy in catching two stories on the homepage, just out of dumb luck and not from impulsive reloading. I'll try to calm down now, and perhaps sleep it off. You know, Slashdot is more addictive than Caffeine...
The scientist in this case has hypothesized that, like antimatter, there can exist an anti-refraction index, a refraction of a negative value. By using special materials that change the angle of refraction so that refracted light is actually reflected through the surface onto the other side, instead of bounced off, lenses can have more accurate readings of smaller wavelengths.
So far, scientists at UCSD have developed ways to use this idea to focus microwaves in an MRI machine. Although those waves are in the 1 meter range, this method allows them to be more accurately focused on smaller areas. X-rays have also been observed with this method. However, visible light has not yet, and probably won't for a while.
The reason that this method is so valuable is because it removes distortion and allows precision optics to bypass a physical limit that has been hampering us for years. We'll see how quickly chip makers and others can capitalize on this technology to make better circuits.
It was inevitable for Napster to join in partnership with the record companies. Of course they will make a pay service - how else could they make money? Ads? However, this is very different than MP3.com. MP3 is paying for the rights to license the songs for a limited time, so that they can stream them like one would stream a radio station. However, Napster is licensing in a different way - they are allowing people to download the songs, and keep them permanently. Thus, they will probably have some kind of "per song" fee. It would be nice to have a flat-fee service, but somehow I doubt it. Additionally, it is likely that most of the music will move to Napster servers, and Napster will just become another music download system, like eMusic, except with their own client program.
Yes, this is sad, but it was inevitable. You can't have a small commercial enterprise both making money and fighting the massive record companies -- it is hard to do one, much less both, at the same time. And for a company with no profit model, it makes even less sense.
So we wait, and we hope, and perhaps Napster will turn out both legal and better. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
They claim that they archive over 80GB an hour, and then talk about the content of porn sites, etc. Of course, how do they have access to all of these porn sites is another thing altogether - that must cost quite a lot for all of those memberships!
The system appears to be some kind of massive search engine/archive similar to Alexa Internet except much more broad and with more sophisticated tracking and reporting capabilities. Although they decline to specify how, apparently they are able to compare images against each other, track texts, and do some massive queries to track back things like the Melissa virus to their first known wherabouts. They claim to have one of the largest databases in Europe, and to have found the perpetrator of the I Love You virus two days before the Feds.
This really seems unlikely, and it would be nice to have some outside information, such as pictures, or results. How you can catalog and search this amount of data must really be a feat, considering their DB is larget than TerraServer and they aren't IBM or Microsoft, with billions to burn.
Luckily, they can only "track" web pages and Usenet postings, so far, and they apparently classifiy it all by domain name and various other (unexplained) patterns.
The first candidate to appoint a *qualified* Technology Advisor will win my vote, until then I'm not voting.
How about Reed Hundt? I've heard that he is quite competent with technology, and he certainly holds his own in the debates with Nader. Now, I haven't done enough investigation to really be able to tell if this guy is well informed, but from the horse's mouth (ie - his web site):
Depending on the leadership of his high school classmate Al Gore and finding unexpected allies in the ranks of free market ideologues, Hundt led the FCC to make the decisions that helped start a wave of entrepreneurship, which in turn has given the United States the world's leading Internet economy. As the memoir shows, every decision involved prodigious political battles--between existing industries and start-ups, between Newt Gingrich and the Clinton-Gore White House, between inside-the-Beltway lobbyists and the new grassroots advocacy of e-mails, between the politics of money and the politics of ideas. In the same period, the often ignored and historically maligned FCC was the place where government decided whether to undertake the largest national initiative to reform K-12 education in the country's history: the program to connect every classroom to the Internet by the year 2001.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking that, if it is in a balloon, it is in fact wrapped. And hey, there is some helium naturally in the air, I would guess then that we are all transferring a bit of unauthorized helium around with us everywhere we go. Saying you're lightening the plane, yeah, okay, but you are still taking up volume, so they have a right to at least a bit of postage, even if it is not measurable on the postal scales. :P
Well, then I'll tell you: most of them were delivered. A few were not. A USPS guy drank the water bottle. The brick arrived in little pieces. The feather duster was pretty quick. Most things arrived within a week. A few took longer. Someone got mad about the touth.
generally, when no one comments, it is not a discussion, it is a monologue. What made you think that we weren't having a discussion here? I mean, you replied to me, I reply to you, someone else might reply, so what is the problem? Discussion.
Generally something almost two months old would be considered old news, no matter if it was linked to in a Slashdot comment or not. Despite this, the article still has merit both for laughts and legitimate information. Therefore, it seems to be a bit of Stuff that matters.. Also, considering my general nerdiness and my interest in the article, this posting was, at least for me, a bit of News for nerds. Therefore, it seems to fit.
I would advise you, though, not to put the postal employees through too much grief. Their job is tough enough as it is. When you want to send some critical and strangely sized package, just do us all a favor and use FedEx or UPS or one of the many other private carriers. And pack appropriately! The poor guy who had to figure out what to do with the moldy and stinky cheese deserves a medal. The person who was forced to break the brick into little pieces to check for drug content probably had better things to do. And the person who had to lug the snow ski to a mailbox probably does not get enough medical coverage by the USPS to make up for the dent in his back.
These are people, people! Give 'em a bit of respect, or at least think about what they have to put up with on those days when you want to shoot someone because of the quality of service you receive.
Dumb luck. Not necessarily my view, but certainly one way to look at it.
The movie acts like its the Kennedy brothers against a vast conspiracy of generals who want world destruction, when it wasn't that at all. Additionally, we never get to see or hear about some of the most important decisions of the crisis, such as Kruschev's two letters to Kennedy and the meetings of the OAS when they decide to back the US. Finally, the UN scenes are a circus, with everyone cheering on Stevenson as he yells at the Russian ambassador.
All in all, an interesting movie with some nice looks at the U2 pilots etc., but not worthwhile for serious history buffs.
I understand this as a practical matter, but I wonder whether the US is the only country that has such software. It seems unlikely, and, while I understand that they feel they have to do what they can to preserve national security, other countries can still sell, distribute, or develop such software in the future. Still, this is good for all of those countries that need powerful computers and don't have the expertise or resources to develop them on their own.
Oh yeah, and stupid recursion exercises just to see if we're paying attention.
And lots of stupid recursion.
And recursion.
And some more recursion.
Then again, look at Wired recently. They now have a huge ugly Compaq banner on the bottom of the home page. Salon seems to be the first to embrace new advertising, and they certainly have enough banners on every page. Last count: 8. Sadly, this appears to be the future. How much do you really make on your site with 2M impressions? Enough to support it? Perhaps, perhaps not. When you have a writing staff like Salon, you're probably not making enough.
I want I want I want micropayments. I would gladly pay $0.02 to read the NYT article, if that is how much they are getting from an advertiser for showing those nasty giant banner ads on the sides. As it is it is easy to ignore banners, but that is no way to make money on the web. So the content providers obviously need money, I just hate the way they do it...Ah, well. Since most of us don't want to spend hundreds a month on web page viewing, ads will continue, I just with they weren't so evil. Salon.com gets it right -- they have a bunch of those stupid links in the story itself, eg "View these sites with SafeWeb" or "Backflip this page." I get the feeling that many more people will be turning off JavaScript now...
I've tried that idea several times. They generally just hang up on me when I ask to speak to a manager, get an address or phone number, or ask to be removed from their lists. This so-called "law" is so difficult to argue successfully that it is basically worthless.
How about we give 7 years in jail to everyone who ever breaks into a computer system? I mean, I sure hate spam as much as the next guy, but "hijacking" mail servers is a crimial offense now? And 7 years jail for doing it? Incredible! How could we endorse this when we as a community often advocate white hat hacking and general system exploration? I mean, a civil action would be merited, and perhaps some monetary penalty, but JAIL??? I don't know, this worries me. It is a dangerous precedent.
So my question is, how did he get the information? And how can you charge someone with posting non-copyrighted/confidential/classified information in any media publication? Rights of the press and all that?
Okay, moving on. Chief problems: this is a US organization. Maybe standards for cooperatives are different in other countries. In fact, I'm sure they are. That's the problem with some of these domains in control of specialied organizations. For instance, ".aero". Will it only be for US aerospace companies? What constitutes an aerospace co.? What about if an Pakistani government-owned co. wants a ".aero", except the US has some kind of embargo against them? All domains should be completely internationalized, governed over by an international NGO, working with the UN or something warm and fuzzy like that. No more of this national crap!
You would be raising a valid point, if the holes lined up when the actual (not the sample) Palm Beach ballots were used.
Really, how would that be any worse than what we have right now? Whoever becomes President will lack any kind of mandate, that much is clear. What is more important, though, is that no one really wants either of them. Like in the 1800s with Hayes and Tilden, the election was so close there that they finally came to an agreement: Hayes will be Pres. (Republican), but would not seek a second term, and he would not change any policy substantially. This should be what happens here -- preserve the status quo, get rid of the two of 'em as soon as possible, and start fresh in four years.
Yeah US History!
yeah, good point. that would be tough to imagine. ah, well. i apologize. guess i'm just a bit trigger happy in catching two stories on the homepage, just out of dumb luck and not from impulsive reloading. I'll try to calm down now, and perhaps sleep it off. You know, Slashdot is more addictive than Caffeine...
Imagine if we had a Beowulf cluster of those...er...nevermind.
So far, scientists at UCSD have developed ways to use this idea to focus microwaves in an MRI machine. Although those waves are in the 1 meter range, this method allows them to be more accurately focused on smaller areas. X-rays have also been observed with this method. However, visible light has not yet, and probably won't for a while.
The reason that this method is so valuable is because it removes distortion and allows precision optics to bypass a physical limit that has been hampering us for years. We'll see how quickly chip makers and others can capitalize on this technology to make better circuits.
And supposedly, that's how web sites make money too. Right...
Yes, this is sad, but it was inevitable. You can't have a small commercial enterprise both making money and fighting the massive record companies -- it is hard to do one, much less both, at the same time. And for a company with no profit model, it makes even less sense.
So we wait, and we hope, and perhaps Napster will turn out both legal and better. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
They claim that they archive over 80GB an hour, and then talk about the content of porn sites, etc. Of course, how do they have access to all of these porn sites is another thing altogether - that must cost quite a lot for all of those memberships! The system appears to be some kind of massive search engine/archive similar to Alexa Internet except much more broad and with more sophisticated tracking and reporting capabilities. Although they decline to specify how, apparently they are able to compare images against each other, track texts, and do some massive queries to track back things like the Melissa virus to their first known wherabouts. They claim to have one of the largest databases in Europe, and to have found the perpetrator of the I Love You virus two days before the Feds. This really seems unlikely, and it would be nice to have some outside information, such as pictures, or results. How you can catalog and search this amount of data must really be a feat, considering their DB is larget than TerraServer and they aren't IBM or Microsoft, with billions to burn. Luckily, they can only "track" web pages and Usenet postings, so far, and they apparently classifiy it all by domain name and various other (unexplained) patterns.